Samuel and May's blog

That's why they are cheap.

I recently bought a Memory Stick for my PSP from eBay. You know, you pay much less for gadgets on eBay, even sometime you have to question why their products are so cheap. The usual answers are cheap labour and not having the overhead of running proper shop. At least that's what I have been using to comfort myself whenever I buy stuff from eBay.

Continuing my fine tradition of breaking things soon after I bought it, the Memory Stick stopped working about a week after I got it. I am not sure if it is just pure bad luck on my part or another plot from Sony trying to stop me from buying any more of their products because they think I have given them way too much of my money already.

Why are technologies so complicated?

Apr 29, 2008 2:22:46 AM

Listen to Eason...

Eason Chan Melbourne Concert 2008

May and I went to watch Eason's concert on Saturday (23/3) at Art Centre's Hamer Hall. This is my first visit to the inside of Art Centre and I must say that the Hamer Hall is architecturally impressive. A grand music hall like this is not really designed for pop concert but any excuse to let me see this hall will do just fine.

Eason is a very good live performer and his concert is very different from others that I have seen. While other singers simply stand on the stage and sing their songs in their concerts, you won't see that in Eason's concert. He danced comically with his energetic and sexy dancers throughout the extremely entertaining show. Speaking of dancers, May and I observed an interesting psychological phenomenon. In the post-concert review, I told May how I enjoyed watching those female-only dancers danced and May said the only dancers she saw were some sexy-looking male dancers on the stage. Very interesting.

Eason Chan Melbourne Concert 2008

The show was great and we had good time but we were utmost disappointed when it came to the time to encore. Everyone knows that it is an unspoken rule that a singer should perform encore after his pretended exit from the stage. Eason left the stage and....that was it. He didn't come back 'cos he said he had a plane to catch.

Eason Chan Melbourne Concert 2008

Eason, that wasn't good enough. Would it hurt you to stay in Melbourne for one more night?

See more photos from the concert here.

Mar 25, 2008 9:42:49 PM

International Auto Show

The Auto Show is still as lame as ever. There are only a handful of super cars and some not-so-spectacular concept cars. Lucky I didn't have to pay for the tickets.

One thing that was good in the show was the the quality of those females PRs in Alfa Romeo and Fiat. Too bad I can't show you any of their photo here.

Mar 2, 2008 7:05:38 PM

Best way to spend a Friday afternoon.

An almost empty MCG

I must have done better than I thought last week because my boss gave me a reserved ticket to a cricket match at MCG on Friday. I have never been to a cricket match before, let alone a cricket match in the famous MCG. I gladly accepted the ticket, even though I know next to nothing about cricket. The match was an One Day International between Australia and Sri Lanka. Not that it matters because any excuse to get me out of the office will do just fine.

I am not a big fan of cricket and always assume that cricket games are boring you only go there to drink with your friends, get yourself drunk and yell out your frustration over the players performance occasionally.

Australia v Sri Lanka

I didn't expect things were that bad when I first got there at about 2:30pm. I don't think I have ever seen an emptier stadium. There were about 1,000 people and looked very insignificant in a stadium that can hold up to 90,000 people (some said 100,000). I could see some cricket fanatics blowing trumpets and drumming on the other side of the field but in the area where my friend and I sat, it was all quiet. It was more like going to a park full of old folks in the morning. Everyone just sat there quietly and many of them came alone and had no one to talk to anyway.

It got cold (it was the last day of summer) after a while and I was dead bored. I went to get some coffee to keep myself warm and awake. Things improved a lot after our second friend arrived. The sun finally stayed out to warm us up. We consumed healthy amount of beer (man, beer is expensive at MCG) and spent most of the time talking office politics and IT stuff. We, at least I, didn't pay too much attention to the game.

At about 6pm everyone started to leave and I was also ready to go home. Just when I was gathering my stuff, my friends told me that it was just a dinner break and the game will start again 45 minutes later and will finish at about 8 or 9pm.

Stay here for another 3 hours? I don't think so.

I said goodbye to my friends and took the tram home, just in time to catch the beautiful sunset.

Sunset on the Yarra

Mar 1, 2008 2:13:27 PM

Need for speed

Now May has finally selected 800+ photos for her slideshow DVD. The first step is to prepare these photos for the slideshow. There are few things you have to do to the photos before they can be used in a slideshow: resizing, sharpening, text overlay....the list goes on and on.

By my calculation, it will take more than 6 hours to finish preparing 800 photos on my notebook. It's almost as bad as having to wait for film to develop in the old days.

I need a quad-core CPU.

Feb 17, 2008 9:53:53 PM

Editor-in-chief

A friend asked May when she can see our European photos online. It wasn't an unreasonable request. I mean, we came back from Europe almost 4 months ago. Most people would expect we would have our photos sorted and ready to show off.

The truth is that May still hasn't selected which photos to show the world (I have done all my photos but, as usual, May's definition of good photos is very different from mine, so she will have to do the sorting herself). After promising her friend that she would send out the URL on Monday, May is now hard at work on selecting photos. It shouldn't take too long. She just have to go through about 4000 photos by the end of today.......

Busy sorting photos

Feb 17, 2008 6:25:40 PM

Mission Impossible!!!

New Year..... New Start.... on the 4th day of 2008, I've got assigned to run a "secret" project by my head of department... along with this "secret" project...

A new title --> ***** Project Manager ***** ever so fancy, however, only title changed, work volume increased, work complexity increased, my pay --> NOT!!!

I am now sitting at home trying to tackle this mission... not very successful tho... (Why am I working from home??? 'Coz its "secret" mission and no "outsider" in the team should know it before the big announcement….

Announcement next Thursday…. (my deadline)…. I don’t know how I can complete this mission in such a tight timeline ( -_-)

I am looking forward to BBQ on Sunday tho... hehe....

Jan 22, 2008 2:59:47 PM

Happy New Year!!! (12:30am 01/01/2008)

Dearest friends & families, HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all!!!
May 2008 be a safe, fun & prosperous one!!! :D

Guess what???
Sam & I've just come back from watching the fireworks

New Year Fireworks in Melbourne

and it is now only 12.30am and we've already had our laptops turned on, comfortably sitting in our living room blogging.... how cool!!!! (air-con on of course.... hehe...)

Jan 1, 2008 1:00:25 AM